


Ink and Steel

by KittenKin



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenKin/pseuds/KittenKin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurogane's sword and Fai's tattoo are thrown together by fate, grow closer as time passes, and become inseparable. Much like their masters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zelinxia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelinxia/gifts).



> Written in response to a request by Zelinxia for "five times that the tattoo teased the sword, and one time he teased back".

"I really never expected you to be able to speak," the tattoo mentioned brightly, with a cheerful laugh that rang through his awareness like the tinkle of a small golden bell. She always seemed to find fresh delight in the thought, even though he'd proven himself sentient and capable of speech to her many times over already.

"I was so surprised to hear your voice!" she exclaimed. "And so happy, too!" Ginryuu sent a non-committal noise her way, knowing from experience that making the tattoo think she was being ignored resulted in unpleasantness. He supposed it wasn't so strange that she should be so joyful in having someone to talk to. The storage room was filled from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, but they were all _items_. Most had power, some had awareness, but none were truly living as the sword and tattoo were. They were both imbued with great magic, with the sword containing a fragment of a dragon god's awareness and the tattoo having been awakened by some spark between herself and the Dimensional Witch.

Ginryuu would have been content to accept his new lot and sleep the years away until such time as Fate saw fit to grant him a new wielder, but the tattoo was still connected by magical bonds to life outside of the shop, and it made her restless and unable or unwilling to sleep. Being stuck in a dark room with only occasional glimpses of lamplight, and perhaps looking forward to seeing the sun once or twice a year when their new home was being cleaned, would have been torturous for such a one, and the sword-spirit felt a gentle satisfaction in sharing her confinement and providing her with a companion.

At least most of the time.

Whenever she began upon this topic of her gratitude for the unexpectedness of having another sentience to converse with, he felt an unaccountable irritation. Her voice was sweet and clear in his mind, her tone light and cheerful, and yet he felt a little edge of mockery in her words more often than not. She would dance around the topic a while, and as soon as some new idea caught her fancy, would strike into new avenues of thought, but today he gave a low huff of annoyance and replied with an impatient question.

"And why _wouldn't_ I have answered you, when you called out so?" he demanded. It was true that there were times he simply didn't feel like talking to her, but it would have taken outright cruelty not to answer her first soft, sad cry out into the new darkness they'd been thrust into all those days and nights ago.

"But I really didn't expect anyone to answer!" she replied, with laughter in her tone. "After all, there were nothing but _things_ all around me."

_Oh, she did **not** just..._

"I am no more a _thing_ than you are," he snarled, pride touched.

"You're a sword," the light and lilting voice reminded him, and the sweet patience in it made him mentally writhe in irritation.

"If I were _only_ a sword I'd not be talking to you. A living awareness makes the difference between a person and a corpse."

"Your body isn't living."

"And yours _is_ , inkspot?!"

"Of course it is!" she declared, and he filled the room with a heavy, dubious silence which, unfortunately, seemed to bounce right off of the paper fan upon which the tattoo lay. "I'm not some simple drawing, done in ink off the tip of a needle; I was spun into being right from my Master's fingertips and laid gently upon my boy's skin. I'm made of magic and hope and love." He performed the mental equivalent of rolling his eyes at this flowery self-praise, and as if she somehow sensed it, there was a pregnant pause before her voice rang out again, sleek and sly and self-satisfied, with more than just a hint of teasing in it this time.

"...I'm _unique_."

_Oh. Oh why that little..._

"And _I_ am no common blade," Ginryuu snapped, always vulnerable on this point. It was his soft, defenseless underbelly; this little fact that he was a copy of the _true_ Ginryuu. "I was forged with more blessings and incantations laid upon me than blows of the hammer, and the sword off of which my form was modeled is but an icon itself of the dragon-god from whom my awareness was born! My body may be metal and stone, but _I_ am made of the river god's power and the great Moon Priestess's magic!"

"Hail, Ginryuu, and well met," the tattoo said serenely, with a quiet laugh that was now rich and warm and soft instead of mocking. This turn of her tone was so unexpected that it washed away all his stung pride, leaving him to simply wonder at her in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

"Your Kuro-grouchy said he'd be back for you," the tattoo mentioned suddenly one day. "Perhaps he and my boy will return together to reclaim us both."

"Ku. Ro. Ga. Ne," Ginryuu said tersely. "How is it that you can prattle on and on about such and such a book your boy's read and the lengthy conversations he's had with such a one but you cannot remember one simple name?"

"My boy didn't like the feel of it on his tongue. I heard him try out shorter versions of it like 'Kuro-rin' and 'Kuro-pon' and they struck me as cute," she replied with blithe unconcern for the sword's ruffled tone or the fact that there hadn't been anything really "cute" about Ginryuu's master. The sword thought some impolite things, but did not push the thoughts toward the fan where lay the tattoo, instead keeping them to himself, where they could not be turned against him to tease and taunt in turn.

"They strike me as disrespectful," Ginryuu growled, and then responded to her initial thought. "And even if he doesn't someday crush your boy out of irritation I doubt much that they'll come here together someday. He's honor-bound to return to his mistress, the princess Tomoyo; he won't be at the bother and probable expense of a trip here to reclaim me." Proud as he was of who he was, he was the more proud of his once-master. The youth was strong and skilled and stubborn as time itself. He wasted neither words nor sentiment, understood duty and sacrifice, and Ginryuu accepted as a matter of course that he himself should have been sacrificed under such circumstances as had befallen the red-eyed warrior.

The tattoo, of course, seemed to take another view of things.

"Mm," she hummed contemplatively. "I suppose there _are_ more suitable swords out there." There was a pause like the thud of a giant's foot coming down on the earth with crushing finality for whatever poor thing had been standing there a moment ago, and then Ginryuu's voice snaked across the room, each word evenly spaced and flatly delivered.

"I. Beg. Your. Pardon." Offended pride _oozed_ from the sword-spirit's tone.

"Oh, I meant 'more' in numerical terms, of course," came the too-sincere reply. "And I only said _suitable_. Of course you're the only sword that truly _belongs_ with your Kuro-touchy-manly-pride."

"You will speak of him with more respect or you'll not speak of him at all," snapped the dragon-headed sword, not wanting to rise to her baiting on his own part but unable to bear her speaking lightly of the human he had served so well for so long. "Tease me if you wish it; we're stuck here, one with another, and I can put up with your foolishness. But you've no knowledge of _him_ and no right to mock him. He is a fine and brave youth and deserves better than to be treated as fodder for your jests."

"He did seem a very fine youth," she said, and her tone was come down just enough from its teasing to keep him from suspecting her of sarcasm or further joking.

"Yes," he growled.

"And you say he is brave."

"Yes." _Blot brain_ , he thought privately. _Will she only parrot my praise of him?_

"Is he also kind?"

"What?" he asked, startled by the unexpected question and the way her voice had dropped.

"Is he kind?" she repeated, her tone now grown more serious and insistent. Ginryuu remained silent while he thought on the odd query, but his confusion must have reached the shelf where the tattoo rested, for she spoke again to explain further the path her thoughts were treading. "Would he stop, if circumstances allowed, to rescue a trapped animal? Would he help someone up who'd fallen? Would he tear off his sleeve to bandage someone's wound? Is he kind?"

Conversations with the ink-bird were often like this. Fire and wind indeed, to catch him up and toss him about and change direction so suddenly and without reason that he was left blinking dizzily. What had kindness to do with anything?

"Yes," he said decisively, despite "kindness" never having been one of the qualities he usually thought of when he was regarding his once-wielder. "He has lent his swordarm and strength to others out of pity and goodness of heart, and not just duty. He is focused and stays rigidly to the path he sets for his own feet, but he'll not turn his face away or laugh at the sight of another in need."

Another silence descended upon the storage room, this time gently, as Ginryuu thought back to times he'd come singing out of his sheath not to defend the Tsukuyomi but some poor honest farmer beset by bandits, or to cut a gravid doe loose from a poacher's snare. The tattoo was equally silent and her mood felt contemplative, and it was a long time before her voice reached him again, so softly that he almost didn't hear it.

"I think they'll come back together," she said, and though he still didn't quite understand, he didn't argue with her.


	3. Chapter 3

"Do you really have no connection with your human? Not even in dreams or visions?" the tattoo asked of him one day, repeating a query she'd pressed on him before in one form or another. He'd answered her quite plainly but she seemed to take his words with incredulity, possessed as she had been from the moment of her creation of a bond with her master, and a kinship with her bearer. It had been a dreaming, cloudy sort of awareness, but now that she was awakened, the phoenix-like spirit could remember what she had not truly been able to register at the time, and seemed to find it strange that he shared not the same sort of bond with his warrior.

"None," he replied plainly and simply, not quite in the mood for her foolishness just now but knowing better than to ignore her or turn her away. He had once attempted to silence her with inattention. She had spoken non-stop for what he estimated was eighteen of this world's days, and when she seemed to understand that he was as stubborn and prideful as she was persistent and optimistic, changed tactics. He'd been able to drown out her speech, but her singing voice was _piercing_.

"I seem to be getting better at dreaming," she reported then to him, and he privately scoffed at the strange way she had with words. That she was informal bothered him not at all - he himself did not extend her very many courtesies nowadays, fallen into closeness and comfort as they were - but to claim to be improved at something done involuntarily while unconscious was an odd thing.

"My master is bound in unnatural sleep, so my boy's dreams are coming through to me. I can catch some of his memories and thoughts as well." The tattoo was silent for a while after this update, and then her tone changed from contemplative to chipper, and Ginryuu gave a small, silent sigh within himself. She was in one of her moods again.

"Do you want to know what I've seen?" she asked brightly.

"If you can retell it simply and sensibly, yes," the sword-spirit replied evenly, not wanting to goad her into a perverseness of spirit by being too testy. "Otherwise...no, I cannot say that I do." She laughed at this, seeming to find delight in the way he compromised nowadays between his formality and her...well, _her_.

"I can be succinct," the tattoo promised, and promptly launched forth while he waited somewhat dubiously. "I think they got married."

"Who?" Ginryuu asked, snorting at her too-succinct information.

"My boy and your Kuro-sweet."

"...what."

"And adopted the little girl and little boy as their own," she added, further pushing the boundaries of reality.

"You're flighty, but I hadn't thought you insane," Ginryuu said a bit dryly, not seeing how any of what she'd just said could possibly be true. "You cannot possibly think I would believe such a thing."

"But my sweet one calls your human 'Daddy' and refers to himself as 'Mommy'," the tattoo persisted. "They spend a lot of time apart from the children they're traveling with, too. They went to a dark but glittery place to drink and listen to music, and your Kuro-kind carried my boy home in his arms."

"You shared one of your boy's crazy dreams," the sword suggested, a bit staggered at the vision that formed unwanted of his once-wielder holding that slender wisp of blonde and fluff in his arms.

"No, their closeness has been going on for a very long time indeed," she insisted, and the very sincere excitement in her voice caused a sliver of doubt to creep past the dragon-spirit's incredulity despite himself. "They were months apart from the children once. They spent all their time together and when they finally reunited with the children they all hugged. It was very sweet."

"They cannot have _wed_ ," Ginryuu replied, confused but starting to believe her. Many days spent together with nothing to do but talk to each other had given him a familiarity with her ways. Her follies had all been in silliness and teasing; she'd never sat there just making up outrageous lies.

"Why not?" she asked simply, and he huffed. Why _would_ they, not why _wouldn't_ they. He didn't send the thought over to her but neither did he keep it guarded, and she seemed to glean it from his mind.

"You think my boy so very hideous that he could not possibly be loved, do you?" The tattoo's voice, usually so bright and lilting, was cold and distant. Though he knew it to be pretense, still he was polite at his core and hastened to reply and mollify where he might have offended.

"No, of course not. I can easily believe that your boy is worthy of all the love and admiration you give him."

"Well, if my sweet one is not the problem, then it must be your Kuro-grump?" she asked, with amusement creeping back into her voice. "He is strong and kind but lacks other qualities that would make him a worthy mate, does he?"

"He lacks nothing," Ginryuu immediately shot back, and then realized he'd left himself nowhere to retreat to when he felt a bit of smugness radiating from the fan. She might tease and he might snarl, but they were comfortable with one another now and the habit of openness was on them and hard to overcome. Not just their deliberately sent words, but their private thoughts and emotions too were transmitted to one another.

"I cannot see them as wed, is all," he added.

"So then...my boy is love-worthy and yours the same, but you don't believe me when I say they've found love together. You think I'm a liar." They were right back to chilling, and if he were capable of movement he would have smacked his head against the wooden shelving.

"I don't mistrust your words or _you_ ," he replied a bit tersely. "He's never had such a one, is all, and it's startling to think on it. Don't ruffle so easily."

"So strong and kind and brave and proud that not all your homeworld could provide a worthy mate for him, hm?" the tattoo mused aloud, and her voice was warm again. Sunlight after a frost. She laughed lightly, and it was like a little dance of bells on the wind. "None good enough for my sweet one in Celes either. They were meant to meet, and to be, and to have each other."

 _Like you and I_ , he said to himself, and this time kept his thoughts close, and closely guarded.

"If you could see them yourself, you wouldn't doubt," the tattoo declared. "Believe me, they love."

And this time, he didn't even speak his thoughts to himself.


	4. Chapter 4

"I want to call you something," she said all of a sudden one day, and the dragon-headed sword once again experienced confusion as the first emotion on hearing her speak.

"If you wish to catch my attention, speak," he replied in a tone that implied heavily that there was an unspoken "fool" at the end of his sentence. "There is hardly any need to call to me when we are the only two capable of speech here."

 _Though I wouldn't put it past you to sit and chatter at that umbrella for hours if the fancy took you,_ he thought. And if he did not deliberately send the thought to her, neither did he keep it close or shielded, and Ginryuu allowed himself some amusement at knowing that she - always so eager after every nuance and unspoken word - would pick up on what he had not communicated. There was a pause and what felt like a faint huff of mixed pouting and pretty laughter coming from the shelf above him, and then she spoke again.

"I want to call you something," that tattoo repeated with determination, and then tacked one word more on to the end. "Please?"

He growled at her, and it was as good as a laugh. He could hear it in her voice, winsome and sweetly pleading and yet rich with amusement and triumph, that she knew he would give her what she wished. He rebuffed all her demands and ignored her threats, but she'd discovered that some combination of honor, chivalry and affection made him unable to withstand her when she asked for a thing, simply and openly.

These days the mixture was largely composed of affection. He knew it and refused to speak it plainly. She knew it and did not presume upon it. There was never any harm in the things she asked, and neither was there any in her current request though he could not see the point in it, so he gave a mental shrug and agreed.

"Well, and can you not simply call me by my name?" he asked. "You know it already. Use it if you wish."

"I want to call you by a name only _I_ can know and use," she replied with some petulance, as if put out that he had not understood the nature of her request. There was a rather startled silence on the sword's part, and she chirped up again, confused now. "Did I ask for something bad?"

"No," Ginryuu replied after a pause to settle himself. "No, but it was unexpected. I've no 'true name' other than the one given to me at my forging in any case, but if I did...in the country where I was made, such things are only shared between immediate family or one with whom there is an equally unbreakable bond. A sworn master, or mate."

_There was nothing 'bad' about it. You just asked me to marry you, is all._

He kept that thought close.

"Oh," was all the reply he got for a while, and it gave him time in which to ponder over the idea of having another name, a secret name to call his own. Something to speak to his spirit-self instead of just a name for the sword that was his vessel. He wondered how he would have answered the ink-and-paper phoenix, had the warrior who'd treasured him for so long seen fit to give him a second, secret name.

He would have given it to her, he decided. Not because she was all that he had now to talk to and share things with, and not merely because she asked. Because she was worthy of it, in all manner of ways, and not only that but also because _he_ put that much value on her. She was a wispy thing spun into being by a mad king, laid upon a fragile yet resilient little boy cracked and crumpled by too many secrets and sorrows, and yet the tattoo was so much more than the mere ink and magic she was made of.

She laughed too much, teased him often and was flightier than a bowl of kittens. But the sound of her voice warmed him, her intellect was none the less sharp for being used to poke at him, and her cheerfulness of spirit made the dark and cramped room they were in seem a bright and comfortable place.

Ginryuu turned his awareness to the shelf where lay the tattoo and reached out to her, curious over her silence. She was calm and quiet, wrapped neatly up in herself, and seemed...cooled, somehow. As if she were turned a soft shade of turquoise, or resting after having exhausted herself, or thinking with sorrow of her boy as even she of the boundless hope and optimism sometimes did. He retreated and thought, and thought again, and thought some more.

Ah.

"Make something up," he said, breaking the silence as suddenly and with as much clarity as she fairly often did.

"What?" the tattoo said, clearly startled out of her thoughts and uncomprehending, and Ginryuu chuckled to himself at having taken her by surprise for the once.

"Give me a name from your heart and I will take it for my own and grant you, and you alone, leave to call me it." He waited, not without some trepidation at his presumptions, but soon felt all that he'd expected - _hoped_ \- to feel from her; surprise, realization and sweet, exultant joy.

" _GIN-TAN!_ " she cried, and his satisfaction in what he'd done exploded in a manner similar to his voice.

" _ **WHAT?!**_ "

"Gin-tan~" she coo'd happily at him. "Like what my boy calls your Kuro-tan. It's perfect!"

Ginryuu sputtered for a moment. _Perfect?! It was not **perfect.** It was stupid and silly and by the ten thousand why had he hoped for seriousness from _her_ of all the scribble-headed inkspots..._

" _No._ I said to give me a _name_ , not some childish diminutive! I'll not have you calling me like a pet!"

"...Gin-chan?"

"That's even more shameful than the first!"

"Gin-puu?"

"NO."

"Gin-kororin."

"STOP IT."

They went on and on for hours. Quite possibly more than a day; he couldn't be certain as he lost track of the faint movement of light and shadow under the doors to the storage room. Finally she exhausted herself and her imagination and they fell into a tired silence.

"You're impossible to please," the tattoo noted with a soft chuckle.

"And _you_ are impossible to put up with," he growled back.

They were both lying, and knew it.


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you think so?" she asked, her voice bright and happy, and Ginryuu wondered if he'd fallen into slumber unawares, for he could not recall that they had been in conversation at all before her question reached him.

"Do I think what?" he asked, his tone somewhat cautious. If he had indeed been so inattentive as to fall asleep while she'd been talking to him, that was a gross breach of manners. _Understandable_ , perhaps, with the way she sometimes prattled on and on and _on_ , merciful heavens, about _nothing at all_ , but still inexcusably rude.

"Hm? Oh, I wasn't talking to you, Gin-tan," she replied sweetly, and to his utter confusion.

"If not to me, then to whom?" the sword-spirit asked, with a wry note of disbelief in his voice. They had once or twice turned their thoughts toward the Witch when she would visit the room, but though they'd gotten a couple of long, thoughtful looks, their attempts at communication had not borne any fruit.

"The umbrella, of course."

Ginryuu could see no "of course" about it, as the only umbrella he could see was only an umbrella, and nothing more. There was naught of magic or spirit about it, and it seemed to him as lifeless and inert a thing as the dust motes sifting through the air.

"The umbrella," he said flatly.

"Yes."

"That umbrella, leaning against the lacquer chest."

"Yes, silly sword. What other umbrella would I be talking to?"

 _You'd chatter away to an imaginary pink one all hung with stars and cherry blossoms if it suited your fancy,_ he thought to himself.

"Well and how should I know?" he asked a bit grumpily, not understanding this latest farce of hers at all. "And what is this umbrella's name?"

"We're not on a name basis yet," the tattoo answered primly. "And thanks to _someone_ being so lazy and stingy with his ideas, I don't have a name to exchange anyway."

The sword sighed at the renewal of this topic. She'd pestered him to name her after she'd claimed the right of nicknaming him, but he had put her off time and time again. Truth be told, he was rather daunted by the task. She was...indefinable. No name seemed to suit. Privately, he still bent his thoughts to the matter, but when confronted by her on it, he simply told her that he could and would not name her.

"Well, and what are you talking about?" he then asked her, trying to turn the topic.

"Personal matters," came the slap of a reply, and then she turned her conversational back to him, putting the sword-spirit in a bit of a huff. "Now, if you're done interrupting, I'd like to go back to my chat."

Ginryuu fell into what could rightly be called a sulk, tempered only by residual confusion as to what she was going on about. The one-sided chatter that reached him was at first unenlightening, and then he gradually began to grasp the conversation. The tattoo was talking to the umbrella about _him_.

She delighted in describing how much his temper had evened out and improved, and seemed later on to accept praise for being the cause of it, or at least a catalyst. The eaves-dropper snorted a bit to himself over this, but upon review, admitted it to be just. He had natural pride and saw nothing wrong in it, but knew now that he'd been too haughty and harsh with her at first. Her easy, familiar manner had offended him at first, but now he found her affectionate and warm, and took as much comfort in her presence as humans did in the heat of a fire.

She - or rather the umbrella - seemed also to lavish praise upon him for his form and figure, make and material, as well as reassuring the tattoo that she was none the less attractive in her own way despite her lack of variety in color, and in only being a flat brush of ink upon paper. Having not nearly as much vanity as he had pride, Ginryuu shrugged the praise of himself off but fell into easy agreement in his thoughts of her beauty. The lines of her were harmonious and smooth, and he liked to gaze upon her for the simple delight in her form as much as for the satisfaction in her company.

The light prattle went on for a while, and the established pattern seemed to be praise of him leading to slight doubts - always assured away by the umbrella - of her suitability as his mate. Ginryuu listened in amusement for a while, usually agreed with what was spoken or implied, and let his thoughts expand on their own as they would. After a while he stopped listening altogether, and mused a while on all the things he thought of his strange and silly special one, and all the ways in which she moved him.

The design of a phoenix was well chosen, he decided, for her mind as well as her form was graceful, elegant, fey and mysterious. Intricate, unusual, and captivating. He would have depicted her in gold if he had had the making of her, however. Her presence in his mind was bright and shining, her voice clear and sweet, and like the tiny gold bells of his home world, she seemed to be a ward against evil. She was pure and clean, like fire and gold. Her rude form of black ink was not who she really was.

 _Suzaku_ , he thought of her design, and _suzu_ of her voice. He rolled the sounds of the words around in his thoughts a bit and found them suddenly fitting. His bright fire-bird, whose good humor and cheerful spirits were ever renewing themselves. His clear golden bell, acting as a little charm against the darkness.

"Cease your games and attend me," he commanded abruptly, and felt her startlement. She was almost always the one demanding and importuning, not he. The sword-spirit often snapped at her to do or stop doing such-and-such a thing, but she could tell when he was only being irritable and blithely ignored whatever he said in his usual growls. Now, however, he was being serious indeed. She caught his mood immediately and ceased her chat mid-sentence.

"Yes, Ginryuu?" she asked. He hadn't put any bite in his tone and she was not afraid of him at any time, but her voice was pitched soft and smooth and respectful in reaction to the way he'd demanded her attention.

"I will name you Suzaku," he announced, forceful and formal but with a pleasant, pleased sensation spreading quickly through him as all her varied emotions washed over him from where she lay. "The fire bird, south to the dragon's east, summer to the dragon's spring; you are next to me, equal to me, and bring me warmth."

She was utterly, utterly mute, no words to be found forming in all the reaches of her thoughts which were wide open to him, and he found space within his own mind to be amused at having finally found a way to silence her. She still sent to him, though there was no speech; all her emotions were laid bare for him to sense, and Ginryuu found a new pride in feeling from her how well she loved him, and how much she gloried in being named and claimed. She was proud to be his, proud that he wished it so, and proud that he saw her worthy and not just desirable.

Time stretched out and still she did not speak, simply and only expressing her joy. He waited, content to do so, and she eventually calmed down and yet remained silent, and finally it was he who broke the stillness.

"Do you not wish to go and tell the umbrella your name, now?" he queried, putting a bit of teasing into his tone.

"I can't, can I?" she asked with some surprise. "Names are private, I thought."

"Not this," Ginryuu replied, somewhat mockingly serious. "That is your common-use name, and you may give it out as you wish. There is something else that I only will call you." He very deliberately dropped all his formality of manner and let love and desire and a playfulness that he'd hardly known was in him enrich his voice while calling her _Suzu-chan_ , and it made her flare into such surprise and embarrassment that it almost surprised him in turn.

And when he _laughed_ at her, heartily and with fondness ringing through every echo of his voice, her confusion flared so hot that he half expected the fan that she lay upon to burst into flames.


End file.
